


The Painting of a Saint

by TheColorBlue



Series: Frozen Heart [5]
Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To avoid Anna, Elsa gets up early when she wants to look at the paintings in the castle galleries.<br/>Takes place before the events of the coronation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Painting of a Saint

Anna was not a morning person, which was why Elsa got up early when she wanted to look at the paintings in the castle galleries. It was true that the paintings looked beautiful in the morning light, but also Elsa did not want to run into her younger sister. Her schedule had become strange like that. She blocked the hours according to Anna’s habits, as an avoidance tactic. Most of the day, Elsa spent reading and studying. She and Anna only really saw each other during meals, sometimes, and that was because mother and father had insisted on it since they were children. Even if Elsa did not engage in recreational activities with her sister, at the very least they could share meals. Elsa rarely talked though, concentrating on not freezing her soup over while she ate it, and Anna concentrated on things like making rafts out of her crackers, muttering to herself about sailors lost at sea, and _oh nooo_ , they were _drownninngg_ … 

Meanwhile, Gerda and Kai, who were the heads of the castle’s tiny staff, would bring out the other courses hot from the kitchen, and Gerda would tell Anna that she was being far too morbid about her meal. 

For goodness’ sakes. 

That was recent, by the way. The drowning cracker sailors had been last week, and Anna was seventeen, and Elsa was twenty, and what were they going to do with each other. 

Elsa liked to go by herself to look at the paintings and that morning, in January, she was sitting alone and thinking about how she and Anna used to come in here as children. They’d make up stories together about all the people in the paintings. Anna’s favorite had been “The Swing,” because the girl in it looked so pretty and happy. At twenty, Elsa had long ago noticed that there was a second fellow in the painting looking up the girl’s skirt, and she wondered if Anna had noticed too. She wondered if Anna had noticed that sometimes there was more to a picture than just the obvious prettiness or happiness. Sometimes people were more than what they said about themselves, or how they behaved in public and, as queen, Elsa had to be aware of this. She wondered if Anna had ever learned, and if it would be her older sister’s fault if Anna learned too late. 

Maybe, over all of these years, they should have talked more.

They should have had conversations.

Ice was lacing itself on the cushion of the bench that Elsa had been sitting on, and she stood up and walked towards the paintings opposite of her. There was another painting that Anna loved, of the Saint Jeanne d’Arc. Anna always said that she loved how Jeanne put on armor and rode out into battle to defend her country. 

At twenty, sometimes it seemed like all Elsa could think about was how Jeanne had been accused of witchcraft and then burnt at a stake, all for trying to protect her country, to do what she had thought best to serve her people. 

Elsa looked at the beautiful woman in the painting, the beautiful Jeanne d’Arc, and then she looked down at the gloves on her hands.

Then she sighed and looked away. She clasped her hands in front of her and walked out of the gallery, taking care to close the doors gently behind her. Ice trickled over the knobs where she touched them. 

They would melt with the sunlight on them, Elsa thought, feeling distant with it, and she turned down the halls back to her room, where she could be alone, and safe again.


End file.
